Tuesday, May 3, 2016

The Forest

***DISCLAIMER***
The following review is entirely my opinion. If you comment (which I
encourage you to do) be respectful. If you don't agree with my opinion
(or other commenters), that's fine. To each their own. These reviews
are not meant to be statements of facts or endorsements, I am just
sharing my opinions and my perspective when watching the film and is
not meant to reflect how these films should be viewed. Finally, the
reviews are given on a scale of 0-5. 0, of course, being
unwatchable. 1, being terrible. 2, being not great. 3, being okay.
4, being great and 5, being epic! And if you enjoy these reviews
feel free to share them and follow the blog or follow me on
Twitter (@RevRonster) for links to my reviews and the occasional
live-Tweet session of the movie I'm watching! The only way I could find this film scary was if I took a laptop with me to a dark woods and watched it there...and, even then, it wouldn't be the movie making me afraid.

The Forest – 1 out of 5

So, it seems there is a forest in Japan where a ton of people
go to kill themselves.I literally never
heard of Aokigahara Forest until the first trailers for this film came
out.Well, this idea of a forest that
seems like it has a siren call to people and gets them to remove themselves
from this mortal coil sounds pretty interesting (albeit scary and tragic) but
does The Forest live up to the potential that naturally arises from this real
world locale?Well, as you can see from
the score, I didn’t think so…

Try to keep your spine from shattering with terror as you watch a womantake a taxi ride from the airport to her hotel!!!!

One night, Sara Price (Natalie Dormer) gets a call from some
police in Japan and they tell her that her twin sister (who, in a display of
perfect casting, is played by Natalie Dormer) went missing in the infamous
Aokigahara Forest and is feared dead.Sara realizes that her sister Jess suffers from a torturous past that
stems from some family horror in their youth but she refuses to believe that
she is gone.Desperate, she flies to
Japan and enlists the help of a shady journalist (Taylor Kinney) and a park
guide (Yukiyoshi Ozawa), who spends his time walking the forest looking for
bodies, and immediately enters the haunted woods to find her sibling.Against all better judgment, an obsessed Sara
decides she won’t leave the forest until she finds her, not even when the sun
goes down.As night fills the sky, Sara
soon learns why this place has claimed so many victims…

The true horror is all the ticks that await you...

Like I previously stated, the tragedy that surrounds the
Aokigahara Forest is pretty interesting and horrifying.So, naturally, it seems like this reality
could easily be tweaked to make a horror film (which, I discovered after
watching this, there have been other films that have used this locale or been
inspired for it).However, The Forest pretty
much fails at nearly every attempt at being a scary feature.

Congratulations, The Forest, you successfully made the most scary thing in the world (children) not be scary.

Occasionally, the film offers up a fleeting moment or two of
genuine creepiness but the rest of the film lacks an atmosphere that is
required to create chills and shivers.Then, when the production seems like it is actively working against
having a tone that is ripe to make the viewer afraid, the actual spooking
moments are pretty bland and the attempts at jump scares are kinda sad.Matters are made even worse when the story
doesn’t fully embrace the “Is this really happening?” question that it projected at
the beginning of entering the forest and the fact it ends on an insanely cliché
horror feature ending makes the entire ordeal feel empty and pointless.

This part made me make a noise from my wide open mouth.

I was yawning, in case you were wondering what the noise was.

So, even though this ends up being like so many other horror
films I watch (read that as not being scary—I’m starting to think I’m just
super hard to scare or have become way too jaded to this genre), I was hoping
for a great performance from Natalie Dormer.I think she’s a great actress and find her to be absolutely incredible
on Game of Thrones but this feature really didn’t feel like it was letting her
do much.Her performance isn’t terrible
but Dormer's talent has been proven in the past and this one feels like there
just wasn’t enough to the script and her character for her really to latch onto
and run with.

The forest is so lush, green and beautiful that I wanna die--oops, sorry.That was probably not the most proper way to compliment this forest.

The Forest had some potential but the final product just
feels like a by-the-numbers horror cliché that almost feels afraid to do
anything unique, deep or even interesting.Sure, there was a moment or two that I found myself saying, “Whoa, that
was a little bit creepy,” but for the most part all I felt was overwhelming
boredom from the dragging story and lazy scares. Maybe I'm being too hard on this film but I was very unimpressed with it.

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About Me

I'm a geek, an atheist (who is also an ordained reverend), a peanut butter and jelly enthusiast, a man who shares the same name with a popular character from "Parks & Rec" and feels he can't live up to the awesomeness of the fictional character, was proudly banned from Reddit, an occasional Shakespearean performer, and a stand up comic.
Have any questions, recommendations or wanna share any theories on various movies? Email me at RevRonMovies@gmail.com and I'll talk about them on my new Q&A segment!